Oh, What a Horrible Night to Summon the Mercs
by ThisStatementIsFalse
Summary: Isaac finds a tarot card in the basement and, mistaking it for another, uses the item gladly. He's only gone and dragged the nine morons of the RED team down there! A Misadventures of the RED Team (meets the Binding of Isaac) story!
1. Prologue

**Whew, this one's been a long time coming, huh? I promised you this crossover months ago, but then SCHOOL. ARGH.**

**Well, if you haven't played or at least seen the intro to The Binding of Isaac, please note that the beginning, boss and ending here very much rely on context and events in the game to make sense. Keep this in mind or I'm gonna seem like a bit of a psychopath. More so than usual, anyway… eh, enjoy! ^^**

Isaac and his mother lived alone, in a small house on a hill. Life was simple and they were both very happy.

Then that all went to Hell, and that's how we have us a _story_.

Prologue – But Then One Day…

~THE BASEMENT~

Going into the basement, Isaac soon decided, had really only been a temporary solution to his troubles. Living down here forever would surely be _dull_, if not life-threatening and unpleasant in several other ways besides.

That should provide sufficient motivation to start heading on out of there.

Strange runes on the floor told Isaac that he ought to press W to move, but as far as he was concerned that made no sense. He used his feet instead.

Isaac had landed in a sparse room offering him an option of three doors, their uneven corners dusted with cobwebs and rough with rotted wood. He noted that they were all much too dark to see through, especially as his vision was a little fuzzy anyway – he couldn't seem to stop crying. Eager to forget why, he reckoned dwelling on it would do him more harm than good, and so on bare feet stepping over the dusty brown floor he plodded to the door on his left.

Hm. Another dim, square room splayed out before him as he passed through. The blank expanse was only interrupted by a flat, greyish-blue platform in the centre, stark and yet still dull in the gloom. With the insatiable curiosity of most kids his age, Isaac made his way over to it inquisitively.

That was certainly interesting – there floated a small, slightly worn card, maybe an inch or two above the ground. Tentatively Isaac reached out and took it, reading the front with giddy keenness. '00 The Morons'. Isaac frowned thoughtfully. Surely, it meant '0 The Fool'?

He didn't know a lot about tarot cards; only that he was not remotely familiar with this one. Nevertheless, he held onto it as he carried on, trotting to the far side of the room where the only other door seemed to be.

Isaac started in fright when he arrived at his destination – he was no longer alone down here. Something he could only describe as a strangely cute, maybe-oversized maggot crawled around the place, soon joined by a couple more. They didn't appear to have any specific task in mind; in fact their wandering looked to be entirely aimless.

For that reason, Isaac took a firm grip on the hope they would leave him alone to pass safely through, and he cautiously tiptoed along.

To start with, he felt pleasantly surprised, letting out a happy murmur as the creatures paid him no mind. He got maybe a third of the way through before realising: one, the doors around him were all closed and, two, he'd gotten a bit too close to the things for comfort.

Suddenly and unexpectedly one of them turned on Isaac, its cute, squishy features morphing into something out of a nightmare. There was no way that a maggot like that had fangs as big as _that_. In a panic, Isaac abruptly remembered what else he'd seen in the runes on the floor – use the arrow keys to fire. He didn't know what those were, but logically if he could move like the floor said, he could _shoot_ like the floor said.

Isaac actually discovered the trick accidentally in the next heartbeat. The charger, as the maggot was called, scared him to the extent he cried even harder, and found the tear made an oddly good projectile. He hadn't been aware he could do that…

Still, the single hit failed to slow the charger down, and promptly it finished its rush and sank its crazy-huge fangs into Isaac's arm. Yelping in an unwelcome combination of fear and pain, Isaac frantically lofted the tarot card and tersely held on for the second it took to activate.

**Well thank you for reading anyhow :p Here's hoping you'll stick around to find out what this very mysterious totally not mentioned in the summary tarot card does! Chapters will be longer than this wee prologue ;)**

… _**Goddammit I just remembered chargers don't appear in the basement…**_

**Hey, was anybody else at Dee Con on Saturday? It was nice seeing some fellow RED mercs! :D**


	2. The Basement

**Note – I programmed a wee randomiser for this thing so bosses; all random. Makes for good times, come join the party! :D**

Chapter One – The Basement

~THE BASEMENT~

The first thing Isaac noticed, when he dared to take a peek, was that he was back where he started, the chargers nowhere to be seen. Well, that was a relief. That tarot card must've meant The Fool like he had assumed after all, taking him back to the first room like this.

Then though, Isaac noticed the second thing.

"Ah… where are we?"

There were three people down here with him. None of them had caught sight of him yet, so he decided not to move until they were deemed safe. The tallest one, who had a nice hat and cool accent, had asked the question to his supposed comrades.

Sniper didn't get an answer from either Spy or Medic. "And what's happened to the art style? W' look weird."

"No, _you_ look weird," Spy said bluntly, "I look – oh, mon Dieu, there's dirt on my suit…"

Medic sighed, turning around to try and work out where they had ended up this time. That would be when he saw Isaac;

"Oh, hello Isaac. What trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?"

The other mercs whipped around in confusion in the same moment Isaac managed a little smile of recognition – he knew Medic! For the life of him he couldn't remember _how,_ or anything useful; only that he'd leant the doctor a tarot card to be used in a tricky situation. (See _Hiking Trip_!)

"… 'ello." Sniper said awkwardly, tipping his hat. Spy shot him the 'what was that you lame person' look before critically surveying the room around them. Awful dark, really. Especially since he'd just been punched in the face by Sniper.

"You've hurt yourself," Medic observed, ignorant to his teammates and regaining Isaac's attention after that situation. The kid, reminded of the charger bite, glanced down at it almost guiltily. "And I haven't my medigun… Only zhis – was is zhis." the German deadpanned, finding a most peculiar sort of item in his pocket.

"One of your medical experiments?" Spy checked disinterestedly, trying not to stare at the little crying fellow in front of them. Medic examined the thing, heart shaped and bright red. After a few moments he turned to Isaac;

"I don't suppose you know, do you?"

Isaac simply nodded. He knew what a yum heart was, and its use of regaining health when consumed. He decided he'd be okay as he was for the moment, so didn't mention as such; instead he pointed to the far door. Apparently happy enough to just go along with whatever was happening, Sniper shrugged,

"Let's get goin' then!"

Pleasantly surprised, Isaac hurried after the three mercs as they sauntered off toward the next room. On the way the REDs discovered they were all in possession of a pistol, for whatever reason, but that meant they could shoot crud so they didn't question it. Completely forgetting or ignoring the standard 'check your corners' rule, the mercs and Isaac all but flounced right on through the door.

They came face-to-face with – well not face to – I mean they didn't _have_ – there were headless things.

There were many headless things. In the room. Hoppers. No faces.

…

Isaac made a peculiar squeak noise and attacked before the mercs could even react; scoring a hit on the nearest hopper in the moment the lot of them began springing around like rabbits on Bonk. Taking that as their cue, the REDs brought up the pistols and opened fire, backgroundly questioning their life choices. Medic had quite forgotten that regular weapons (ones that _didn't_ shoot needles and the like) had recoil, so that was a _nice_ surprise.

The hoppers, mere moments ago prancing back and forth with nary a care in the world, got rather ticked off and hostile, changing trajectory and leaping for the intruders. Either wisely or just out of 'holy crap run away' reflexes the four of them moved around side, continuing to shoot until abruptly one of the enemies poofed out of existence with an unpleasant splatter of blood.

"... You live in a strange sort of place, Isaac" Spy commented absently, seemingly unfazed. The remainder of the hoppers persistently chased them around for a bit, but soon the other three followed the fate of the first. "And what on Earth are you shooting anyway?"

Sniper felt inclined to take this opportunity, putting on a shocked voice; "Somethin' Spy doesn't know!? Well that's it, the world ended, we're in Hell right now."

"Look, zhe doors are open!" Medic interjected, usually impartial to such fights but eager to move on. Having a child see them fighting wouldn't be proper, he thought, moseying through the fairly gory remains of the monsters they'd just killed together. Certainly improper.

They had the grand option of two doors, one opposite to that they had entered and one adjacent. Isaac, apparently knowing what he was doing, led the mercs to the latter, glad he had some company down here. Things felt much less scary to him now that he had three trigger-happy psychopaths in the basement.

The mercenaries weren't entirely sure what they were supposed to accomplish here, or how they got here, or what the Hell was going on, or even if this statement was false, but they figured leaving a kid alone with these things wouldn't bode well on those things people had. Consciences, something like that.

This door differed from the others so far in the sense it had a more opulent appearance, golden and neat opposed to wooden and ill-fitted. The little progression headed on through, finding no further enemies to fight. Instead the flat, square room contained only the one thing - a grey platform not unlike that on which Isaac found the tarot card. No card this time, but an item altogether much weirder a find.

"Are these undies?" Sniper checked dubiously. Isaac nodded again, a fun wee idea forming in his head. He grabbed the floating pair of underpants and promptly put them on Sniper's head. The marksman's pistol suddenly transformed into a sniper rifle, the words 'Range Up!' appearing on the side. "… Aw yes."

Isaac occasionally wondered how exactly these items worked.

Regardless, the progression moved on, finding no other way out of the golden room and heading back the way they came. In the now empty room in which they had met the hoppers they tried a new route, veering left and encountering a roomful of small flies, idly buzzing back and forth. As soon as the mercs and Isaac approached though, they turned hostile and flew right at them angry-style.

"I hate this place," Spy muttered, already wearing his 'so done with this' expression. In perhaps a more unusual attempt to cheer him up, Isaac chucked a small cartoonish bomb he evidently possessed at the incoming enemies, blowing the lot of them clean out the basement. He also happened to catch a blue-tinted rock in the explosion, finding a little blue heart-shaped thing and a silver key inside.

"I love zhis place," Medic sighed happily. Mad places were always so much more fun.

Once more the four of them had to pass through the hopper room and then the starting one, with the writing on the floor, until they could reach a new area. Well, new for the mercs anyway. Isaac subtly shuffled around behind the mercs before they headed in, still a little wary of the chargers. No wonder because they do the cute thing and then suddenly the evil thing, it's just – why? Why?

If the REDs noticed, they didn't mention it and absently passed under the doorframe, blissfully ignorant. And then Sniper did something he instantly regretted.

"They're so cute!" he squealed, actually proper squealed, upon seeing the little chargers. Spy perked up a tad seeing as he now had that to use against Sniper later. Abruptly the nearest charger lived up to its name and zoomed toward them, massive fangs bared. Sniper blinked. "I WAS WRONG!"

Isaac ran off in a small panic, taking the occasional shot as he skirted the room. The mercs exchanged glances as though looking for a safe solution, but when none of those surfaced they simply scattered in their humiliation runs. The chargers themselves appeared a tad confused at this development, then shrugged it off and made chase.

Sniper picked a cosy wee corner to stand in and fire at the further away maggot-monsters until they got too close, starting a vicious cycle of running and camping which makes basically no sense. Spy had discovered he didn't in fact have either his knife or cloaking watch and took to circling the room and shooting at everything that moved. This meant he almost hit Medic who was busy both yelling abuse at him and picking one charger, focusing fire on it.

Isaac appeared at the side of the same enemy and helped finish it off; and across the room Spy somehow took out another. The three of them then turned around screaming and eventually brought down the penultimate one. They noticed the last had Sniper cornered and hurried to remedy this.

"Aw, yer cute after all," Sniper was saying, sitting down in front of the last charger as the squishy little guy curiously crawled up to him. "I'm gonna call ya Squishy and you will be mine and you will be my Squishy."

The others arrived and promptly killed Squishy.

"NOOOOO!" Sniper wailed in slow motion, the others exchanging bewildered glances as they dragged the marksman from the room. They peeked through the door, hoping to find a lovely empty space for a wee rest. Naturally they had no such fortune.

"They aren't moving…" Spy observed, referring to the huddle of figures ahead of them, "A little foreboding." He adopted a super-serious expression like he intended to lay down the _best plan known to man_. "Shall we frolic?"

The others didn't even get to think about demanding 'WHAT' before Spy took off, flouncing across the room with the grace of a majestic eagle. Piloting a blimp.

At that moment the gapers in the middle of the room woke up and – smiling all too creepily – flocked after him. Spy nearly wet himself and ran off, cussing in several different languages as the mercs and Isaac debated whether to assist him. See, on the one hand, it looked _really_ funny. On the other if Spy died then the things would surely come after them, and that was less of a pleasant thought.

Cue the run-away music!

Spy dashed past, flailing like his life depended on it, followed by the gapers, which were in turn pursued by a trio of yelling, aimlessly shooting guys. They circled the room no less than four times before the gapers' heads _came off_, and the monsters went ahead and kept chasing them. With no heads. Mighty disturbing prospect, that.

"Ah, creepy monster things?" Medic asked politely enough, running backward to address them as they ambled after the group. "How are you doing that? Because I tried zhat vith Spy's head-"

"We don't discuss that!" Spy reminded him sharply, shuddering at the thought of the fridge incident and finishing off the gapers with newfound purpose. Damn Medic couldn't have stopped after taking the BLU Spy's head, could he?

With the room cleared the progression had two further doors to make their selection from. One, however, appeared to be locked, and the other resembled a gateway to Hell. The mercs blanched when Isaac contentedly set course for the latter. As far as he was concerned unlocking the shop over there would be pointless, regarding their lack of money, so they may as well get this over with. Uneasily, the RED mercs followed him into the darkness of;

~THE BOSS ROOM~

And it was _extremely_ dark in there, like someone had taken a look at the sun and thought, 'nah, we should put that thing out. Too bright.' The little progression though had the perfect level of visibility to see something which, if given a choice, they would much rather avoid.

Monstro was by no means a pretty little monster; quite the contrary. His form consisted of a dome sort of shape with, at the risk of sounding rude, a grotesque face. Hm, no, there is no nice way to word that. Primarily this was because he appeared quite bloody, and he had that infamous crazy-stare thing going on. Plus – and, this mattered – he towered over the mercs, daunting them with his massive bulk.

"… I'm havin' mixed feelings about this place," Sniper mused.

Monstro moved off, bounding toward the group despite his altogether lack of limbs. In fact a sentient space hopper wearing a disturbingly large and cheery smile sprang to mind. Well, maybe not to the mercs or Isaac, because they occupied themselves with opening fire and dodging out of the way.

The monster followed them dutifully in a series of short bounces, the floor groaning in protest each time his big arse landed. When the mercs and Isaac managed to gain a little ground though, Monstro promptly vanished.

"Zhat's, ah, rather unsettling," Medic anxiously swept his gaze around the area. "Monster, come back here! I promise I'll heal you!"

Oh that's right, Isaac thought. He knew Medic from when the RED briefly worked in that little medi clinic in the city. (_Misadventures of the RED Team 2_, folks. Yeah he was totally there.) That had been an odd enough day. So many doves flying around during his check-up…

Monstro chose that moment to complete his spectacular leap and speed down again, grinning manically as he attempted to crush someone. Spy didn't even think about it; just jumped on up there to meet him with a roundhouse kick.

"Ow." The Frenchman muttered. Evidently that hadn't worked out too well for him. "Why did you all let me do that?"

Sniper absently answered how it was funny and paused to high five Isaac before they started shooting again. Monstro had ceased in his springing gait and, with the expression of a bloke trying to outdrink the Demoman the monster suddenly fired back at them. The projectiles arced through the musty air, deep crimson in colouration. The REDs usually liked red, too.

"You didn't tell us it could do _zhat_," Medic mumbled, trying not to sound too accusing. The four of them continued running to evade the offense, pretty decent at doing so after all their time fighting BLUs. Granted those guys fired _bullets_ and all…

The battle became a divvy up of fleeing to avoid damage of the painful variety and frantically shooting at Monstro, who never seemed to act any worse for wear. Couldn't even pretend he was getting weaker, just to make everybody feel that bit more positive. What a bully.

Well it wouldn't hurt to know he _was_ in fact on his way downhill. Somehow in the midst of their freaking out and lack of sufficient aim (standards, Snipes, _jeez_) they had inflicted about as much damage as the monster could take. Defeated, he frowned a bit, obviously unhappy with this conclusion, then went ahead and fell in a pile of, uh, just gore, really. Got on the mercs' shoes and everything, ugh.

After a pause though they realised they had won and cheered, treating the world to an undignified victory dance. They took a single step to saunter around the room and collect their post-boss pickups when they tripped and pitched forward through a trapdoor, vanishing into the floor below.

_Current stats;_

_Isaac – base, 2 ½ HP, soul heart_

_Medic – base, yum heart, 3 HP_

_Sniper – range up, 3 HP_

_Spy – base, 2 HP_

_Team in possession of one key_

**Yeah. You guys are getting **_**stats**_** (so-I-remember-what's-going-on)**

**By the way, the cover is just a terrible wee doodle I did of Scout in TBoI style XD And the title of course is a very clever reference that probably nobody understands :p Thanks for reading!**


	3. The Cellar

Chapter Two – The Cellar

~CELLAR (BASEMENT II)~

"Ow. Ow. Owww…" The mercs groaned, reviewing the level of damage done to themselves after that spectacular fall. Isaac landed on top of them a moment later. "OW!"

Isaac shrugged a somewhat disinterested apology as he hopped to the floor, looking around. This place was even further worn down than the basement, the floorboards all but rotted away and thick cobwebs shrouding the majority of the space. At least they still had a little light to see all this crap by.

The mercs clambered upright to check out the room as well, finding an option of three doors to mosey through. Spy glanced distastefully around;

"So it isn't over. Splendid." He paused to see if anyone had anything to say in regards to that. When they didn't, he let out an excessively exasperated sigh, "I'm picking the door then. How do you like that? HUH!?"

"… I think he's lost it," Sniper commented, following the aggressively-walking Frenchman to the back door alongside the others. They reached the next room to find a couple of… well, what were – they were kind of – they were squishy things. Fairly yucky squishy things called mulligoons. Anyway they ran off the second the mercs appeared, jamming themselves into the far corners. Medic for one had no quarrel with taking them out regardless, although he didn't appreciate the little bomb appearing on their deaths and launching him into the nearest wall. Thus he felt the Schadenfreude.

Oh my God I just spelled that correctly _first time_ can I get a Hell yeah.

Eventually the mercs helped their teammate up and continued along, only to find the other door locked. The main reason this sucked being it was one of the shiny golden doors. The main reason this was _okay_ was that they still had that key, aw yes.

The progression proceeded progressively into the item room, and found a wicked knife in the centre. Naturally, Spy called it;

"Stab, stab, stab," he mimicked Sniper's accent, jabbing the thing at the others like some kind of insensitive prank. Honestly.

They headed back through to the start room, stumbling over the uneven floor, and surveyed their remaining options; left or right? Medic came up with the marvellous solution of spinning around without looking and picking the door he ended up facing when he stopped. So fourteen attempts later (he basically only ever saw walls) they headed right.

Isaac led them through the door and regretted it instantly – a whole bunch of spiderish things (trites) were waiting for them, springing about the room like hoppers.

"Hunter!" Sniper yelled, then remembered, "Oh wait, wrong game." Abruptly he had to awkwardly dodge to the side when a trite flew at him, four legs all up in his face. Wait four that's not how spiders work.

The battle strategy for this particular skirmish bore down to aimlessly running around and, in Sniper's case, removing monsters trying to act like hats from his noggin. Spy on the other hand had quite a fun time, as it turned out he was in possession of a throwing knife, which was worth losing that pistol for.

Contentedly enough he sauntered about and lobbed the blade every-which-way, humming some kind of cheery song now he could freely murder stuff. Medic and Isaac unanimously decided to hang around him for the time being, daintily leaping around these infuriating cobwebs all over the place.

Finally (with only trace amounts of excruciating pain inflicted upon them here and there) the group dealt with the trites and tiredly trailed their way to the next and only door. They'd probably feel a tad better if they knew what the heck was going on down here.

When the REDs asked Isaac he didn't really give a substantial reply (a mumbled response of 'dunno' akin to Pyro's was provided), Medic bluntly asking;

"You don't say much, do you?"

Perhaps fittingly Isaac didn't say anything in reply, only nodded a little. Then he wondered if he had just indicted 'yes, in fact he _does_ say much actually' or 'no, he agrees that he doesn't say much', which got distracting, confusing, and altogether an unnecessary train of thought to be riding.

What it did do was provide the needed diversion from the entering-of-the-room event taking place. Therefore they marched right into a crowd of gapers, _again_. The lot of them swarmed after the mercs and Isaac like doves to a surgery table with a Heavy on it, wee arms flailing excitedly.

Now understandably the guys were fairly pooped by this late stage in the day. Or night. Whatever. So they maybe didn't keep the ideal distance from the monsters as they would have preferred to and ended up in the sticky situation of 'stuck in a corner - which smelled pretty bad and creaked a lot, already splintered and otherwise beat up – because of some zombie things'.

Aaaand, the pummelling commenced.

Within a few moments the mercs were down to one HP (had they known what HP was, ahem) and Isaac to two, due to the blue heart from earlier absorbing a couple of hits for him. A rapid stream of frantic shooting and knife-throwing took down the gapers and subsequently their headless states before too long. The four of them sat where they were for a bit.

"Zhat could've gone better," Medic eventually offered in the uncomfortable silence, leaning back to stare at the murky, distant ceiling. "Maybe you could tell me if zhis is any use?" He removed the yum heart from his pocket and gave it to Isaac. Having forgotten about the item, Isaac blinked in surprise for a moment, then using charade-like techniques explained it could be eaten to restore a little health.

The kid didn't fail to notice everyone looking at him expectantly.

"Well, go on then," Sniper said after a while, "_We're_ 'ardly gonna use it when a kid could."

"We're allowed the occasional nice moment in these stories," Spy proclaimed. "_Occasionally_. We're no good at them."

He was quite right because no one knew what to do next, hence the following time lapse.

The group had only two doors to pick from, and one was locked, so really that narrowed down the selection significantly. The newly-healed Isaac led the way into the next room, cautiously passing under the worn, dusty doorframe. Ah, splendid. A roomful of nifty wee spiders splayed out before them, the (for some reason) four-legged pint-sized monsters dashing here and there.

Surely, this would prove no problem.

"Stay. Still. _Wankas_!" Sniper raged mere moments later, giving up on using the scope and randomly letting the rifle off around the room. Even without the actual intent of dodging, the spiders made a pretty good job of it. The mercs and Isaac ultimately resorted to chasing them haphazardly back and forth, shooting aimlessly and running into the walls.

"Wait - WAIT, I have it," Spy suddenly announced, halting dead in the middle of the room. Everyone else paused to witness whatever he planned on doing. "We use _live bait_."

"Oh, okay," Medic intercepted casually, striding over and promptly chucking the Spy into a corner. "Ach, poor defenceless Spy! _Easy prey for spiders, ja_?"

Sniper snickered to himself and Isaac stared on in confusion as the spiders went ahead and scuttled toward the Spy. Reasonably objective to this, the Frenchman flailed around with the knife as they approached and finally took one of them out, leaving the others to charge over and shoot the crap out of the remainder.

For their troubles they received a couple of those cartoonish bombs, which they left with Isaac seeing as they weren't Demo or Soldier. Granted neither of those two should really be trusted with explosives themselves…

Anyhow. The team collected themselves and checked out their potential paths. Couple of doors as usual, neither particularly distinctive from the other; just the same, dusty brown wooden structures. On a whim they moved for the south-most one, trudging across the battered floorboards and sidling around yet more webs scattered about. At least, they reckoned, they wouldn't be encountering some kind of boss figure.

"So this's gotta be a boss," Sniper commented not much later, fleeing after the others. "Typical."

The monster in question had nothing on the size of Monstro – in fact it appeared to be exactly Isaac's height. In actuality it somewhat resembled him too, though pink and quite sickly-looking, and it insistently chased them at a speedy pace. Isaac's mother had told him often enough to avoid the deadly sins; he just hadn't been aware they would have such a violent personified form. C'mon, who _would_ anticipate that sort of thing? Jeez.

Lust, as the mini boss was, didn't do much else besides run after the team, a lot like the gapers. However they were significantly more creeped out by this one and doubled the run-away effort, somehow remembering to run and gun amidst the panic.

"I'm starting to think," Spy began lethargically, "that this may not even be happening. Maybe _I'm_ the one in the year-long dream sequence…" (See _Shopping Trip_, clueless friends), "Which would mean a unicorn is bound to turn up soon."

"I vouldn't be surprised," Medic replied absently, shooting Lust repeatedly in the face to no visual effect. "Although, zhat suggests zhe whole team are sharing one elongated dream…"

Realising this wouldn't get them anywhere or anything but a headache, Isaac sighed a little sigh and set one of the bombs to snap them out of it. In a feat of accidental success he also blew the pursuing monster to high Hell, leaving the mercs to turn around blankly and stop where they were, confuddled.

Hey, confuddled is adorable.

With a collective 'meh' the four of them set off for their next door, only to find it to be another 'gateway to Hell' looking thing. Adopting very, very forced smiles the mercs stared at it unwaveringly, thinking how if they were lesser men they'd be crying right about now.

The thing was, they kinda _really_ wanted to escape this place. Whether that would only happen if they died or did something equally as unpleasant, they knew not, but they couldn't just go on and head to respawn without Isaac having the option. That would just be mean, and the three trigger-happy mercs were surely never mean. Ha.

"On we go then," Sniper mustered up a semi-positive tone and strode in slow motion toward the door, leaving the others to awkwardly overtake him at regular speed. The Australian pouted and jogged after them into;

~THE BOSS ROOM~

Damn, this place was a wreck. Darkness smudged over everything within a few feet, like the team were part of a painting and someone had spilled ink all around them. Carefully they treaded over the rough grey-brown floorboards, mindful of the gaps that would easily lead to a great downward fall. The progression crept further into the room, scanning for a sign of life to no avail.

"Cue disaster in three, two, one," Spy said monotonously, waiting for the inevitable sneak attack. None came, but right at the end of the countdown a little fly buzzed their way, hovering around at head height and generally being a nuisance. Eventually Isaac just went and shot the thing down, though a second later another one took its place. Then another, and yet more until the team suddenly found themselves facing a storm cloud of flies.

And then, as if they weren't already fed up of _these_ guys, the 'big cheese' appeared before them, looming through the darkness, cruising along like a massive grey hot air balloon with a slightly disturbing expression.

The Duke of Flies, as those informed would know, can prove no trouble if taken down instantly. Give the guy half a chance and he'll have a full army of attack flies acting as a living shield and an oddly tough force to be reckoned with.

Regrettably, the team had given it that chance.

"Ooh, zhis isn't good." Medic summarised curtly, though not so helpfully. The others mumbled agreement, nodding for good measure, then made a peculiar 'rargh' noise and opened fire. A bunch of red flies zoomed toward them, requiring a few shots each to go down, while the smaller black flies really only got in the way.

"Now would be a nice time for a flame thrower," Spy observed, taking out a line of flies with a well-aimed knife throw. "Or a minigun, even. I'm not fussed either way."

"Jarate is my best offer," Sniper shrugged, clearing a small gap just long enough to score a hit or two on the Duke. Spy's disgusted expression told him that wouldn't be appreciated. Isaac wondered if he wanted to know what jarate was, but instead occupied himself with the fly situation. There sure were a lot of them. Where were they comingfrom?

"Ha, zhat's most interesting," Medic said, having figured that part out. "Zhe big fellow seems to be _making_ zhe flies. Can ve stay here for a bit? So strange."

His teammates simultaneously yelled 'no', marking the first time they agreed on anything. The team figured out that killing the 'shield' would get them nowhere now; it regenerated too quickly. They would have to go for the Duke himself by any means possible. The only things they could think of though proved fairly risky. To a deadly extent. What with only having the one HP, this could go pear-shaped fairly easily.

That's actually a shame for pears. Apologies.

"Isaac, stay back here," Medic turned briefly to address the kid, "Ve'll go in and see vhat ve can do."

"Worst case, w' die by flies, to make an obscure reference," Sniper added, "We'll respawn anyhow. I reckon you won't, so…" He shrugged awkwardly. "Um. Stay safe?"

"… You're an embarrassment," Spy stated flatly, leading the way into direct battle with the Duke. Sniper frowned a little but hurried after him, Medic pausing to shoot Isaac a 'see what I have to put up with' look before following. Isaac felt a tad uneasy as he watched them go; for mercenaries they seemed kinda nice. Meh, he could distract himself by picking off some flies.

Spy and Medic went for epic battle cries in their mother languages, so Sniper of course didn't feel like using English and made owl noises. The three of them all but jump-kicked into the Duke's halo of flies which, in hindsight, wasn't the best plan, but it was the one they were going with. 'Desperate times' and whatnot. Somehow they did in fact break through the mass of irritating buzzing wings (leaving them on the precarious position of half a hit point left) and encountered the boss.

It looked a smidge like the moon if they squinted, under the assumption the moon could go ahead and drift around the sky whenever it thought no one was there to see it. Maybe the balloon simile from earlier was better.

"Jarate dispensed," Sniper informed the others uncomfortably as they stared up at the monster with 'Holy crap why did we do this' expressions. Spy didn't want to think about that and awkwardly extended his knife arm, giving the Duke a wee stab. Promptly the boss lost his cool and belched out a whole bunch of his minions, which was considered both disgusting and fascinating by different members of the party.

Isaac, on the outskirts of this chaos, hadn't much idea what was going on. He continued to fend off the nearest little monsters but couldn't even see the mercs, never mind get through to them. He'd have quite the problem if those three died, actually, he thought. At least that would probably never happen.

"Spook's dead," Sniper notified Medic maybe a split-second later, wondering how bad that was for the current fight. "Hm."

Evidently 'hm' was his wondering sound.

"Certainly is a problem," Medic mused, realising they'd really messed it up this time. Still, they were mercenaries, so they fought on in a very manly fashion – screaming and running around the Duke in circleish ovals without paying much attention to where they were aiming. Through the powers of video game logic and plot protection they survived long enough to deal highly significant damage, leaving the boss on a sliver of HP, when Medic noticed he hadn't seen Sniper in a while.

He really would've killed for his Über projectile shield right about now.

It wouldn't bode well on anybody's mind - should they happen to be reading a transcript of the events of this day - Medic thought, if he left a wee kid to fight for his life in a basement with a monster, but he was blindsided by an attack fly and sent back to respawn for the purpose of giving Isaac a Moment of Badass.

Go on and grab some epic music because it won't actually be that epic by itself.

Isaac didn't care for having his new best buddies killed dead by a fly-thingy, even if they were going to 'respawn', whatever that was. At that point he remembered he still had the second little cartoonish bomb they had found earlier. Aw yes. Spinning once for a bit of momentum, Isaac lobbed the thing into the approaching mass of flies, the explosion detonating in the dead centre and scattering the bugs like they were Coca Cola and the bomb was Mentos.

Ooh boy, that worked better than he dared hope; now he had a straight shot through to the Duke of Flies. In the end, thanks to the mercs, it only took the one clear shot to finish off the boss, which fell alongside his flies. Isaac blinked. _He was a freakin' hero_.

Even better, he actually managed to grab his victory loot this time – breakfast! (Which somehow boosted his max HP. Don't even ask how.) That left him little else to do. His team was gone, but there wasn't any way he could fix that now, so…

Trapdoor it was.

_Current stats;_

_Isaac – base, 4 HP_

_Medic – base, yum heart, 0 HP (Dead)_

_Sniper – range up, 0 HP (Dead)_

_Spy – base, Mom's knife, 0 HP (Dead)_

**Y'know the game actually says 'Stab, stab, stab' when you pick up the knife? Fun fact :p**

**And the Duke of Flies is actually such an easy boss XD**

**Thanks for reading!**


	4. The Caves

Chapter Three – The Caves

~CAVES~

Isaac remembered, a bit too late, that jumping from great heights such as a storey or so would likely result in pain, if not major injury. It was just as well he landed on something squishy.

"Um. Hello?"

Oh, he landed on some_one_ squishy.

Isaac turned around a little to see a certain Heavy Weapons Guy lying on the ground, looking at him. This was probably because the kid was currently standing on the man's stomach. Uncomfortably he waved 'hi' and hopped to the floor. Hang on, that wasn't a wooden texture; somehow he seemed to have ended up in a cave…

A little confused, Heavy sat up, revealing two other fellows prone beside him. Did this mean 00 The Morons was still in effect?

"Eh, where are we this time?" the Demoman asked groggily, clambering upright himself. The rocky ground had done a number on his back and everything. "Just once can we find a nice castle or somethin'?"

The last and littlest merc got up to have a glance around. Hopefully the 'dull places can often be interesting' thing applied here – nothing but rocks and more rocks. Before long the Engineer noticed Isaac as well;

"Hello!" he said politely, because he's nice like that. "Um, are you okay?" Though he was still crying profusely (he had come to the conclusion he hadn't the ability to stop while he still might need to shoot things) Isaac nodded brightly. At least he had company again. "… Alrighty then."

Demo stared at the kid for a second, apparently trying to place him. "Oh, you're Isaac, ain't ya?" He asked suddenly, garnering a surprised look from the boy in question. "Yeah, you were in the city an' this lady kept yellin' yer name at ya. I was the drunk guy runnin' away from the bar I'm now banned from."

Of course. How could it be anything else.

Isaac nodded slowly and decided they had better move on, trying the same tactic as last time and pointing to the leftmost door at random. For a moment the REDs simply looked at it, devoid of expression, then abruptly adopted happy smiles and started sauntering over there.

"Is time for adventure!" Heavy proclaimed excitably, humming a travelling song at intense levels of volume. Isaac hurried after them and caught up in the moment the mercs realised they all had pistols for some reason, Heavy's awkwardly oversized so he could actually hold it. Naturally Engy was down with the weapon; Demo and Heavy less glad about it. Nevertheless the four of them swiftly reached the door, its frame crooked and dusty with age. Nothing to be seen but deep darkness in there.

They stepped into the room and could see a little more clearly, distracted by the scenery as the door closed behind them. Isaac got a small fright when he noticed what appeared at first to be chargers, but breathed out when he realised they were instead the more docile maggots. Largely oversized killer maggots, but still.

"Do we kill these, or…?" Engy asked absently, checking the gun was loaded. In answer, revealing a skill he probably just came up with, Demo impersonated Soldier's accent and yelled;

"MAGGOTS!" The Scotsman proceeded to empty a clip into the nearest one, taking the little monster out. Isaac shrugged a big old 'why not' and joined him, startling the others with his unusual method of attack. Mumbling 'to each their own' Engy and then Heavy followed suit, easily defeating the slow maggots. Once they cleared the room of enemies a small worn card appeared in the centre.

"Looks like card Doctor used last story," Heavy observed casually, like he didn't know what he just broke. Isaac took the tarot card and scanned the front. Huh, odd coincidence; this one was that which he thought he had earlier – 0 The Fool. He held onto it and led the mercs back through to the start room, seeing as there weren't any other ways out of here.

This time from there they went south, entering a similar door to find a not-so-similar room. This one was littered with several small, square pits, drops into nothingness like the one in Helltower back home. Also those were some creepy-ass monsters floating about. Basically they consisted of heads - each of them a fairly gruesome-looking head hovering a bit off the ground.

"… That just ain't right," Engy commented, figuring he'd go ahead and shoot these whether he was obligated to or not. Problem was – they shot back. Those yucky red projectiles flew from every maw, as the enemy were called, directly at the mercs, who had subconsciously stepped in front of Isaac the moment the things started shooting.

Isaac decided he liked these guys.

But then the maws started drifting toward them.

"Aw Hell nah," Demo snapped on the Deus Specs because there was no freakin' way he was having this. "FREEDOM!" he cried, vocalising the Space Invaders theme (which definitely existed back then) and firing at the approaching head things, driving them back. Carefully dodging the pits, Engy, Heavy and Isaac flanked the monsters, making odd wee noises of distress whenever they had to avoid an incoming shot.

Eventually they emptied the room of maws and regrouped, questioning why the heck they had to have been brought here of all places. Creepy caves with creepier monsters; presumably it didn't get much worse than that.

The only other door in this particular room was a nice shiny golden one, which the team gladly moved toward. When they entered the item room and found some kind of new-fangled machine item, Engy called dibs on it. Technology 2, some may know, is so damn fun to use, but Engy would have to wait until they found a monster to fight.

Once more the progression travelled through the start room, taking the last available door to the north.

Remember the gapers? Scary, right? Now imagine what would happen if they were less _pale_ and more _blood red_, and had an altogether lack of pleasant facial features but were still persistently pursuing anyone they met.

Because that pretty much summed up a globin.

"Oh, this is bad," Heavy noted, watching alongside the team dumbly as the monsters zoomed toward them, gaping with a hungry look. "RUN!"

Seeing as that was the go-to plan in pretty much any new or unexpected situation, the mercs had no quarrel with carrying it out. Isaac hadn't known until then just how high pitched a scream grown men could elicit, and was duly terrified in finding out. Also he couldn't help but observe how funny it looked when Heavy was running, especially as he could hit a faster pace than usual because stat mechanics. LEGIT.

Engy and Demo went as far as halting dead, stunned, when the Russian overtook them. God forbid the Heavies added speed to their arsenal...

"OH MAH GOD!" Engy cried, suddenly remembering why they were running and whipping around to frantically shoot the nearest globin in the torso. To his pleasant surprise the monster fell almost instantly, into a wee pile of uh, goo, or something. "Huge success!" The Engineer and Demoman slapped high five in victory, sneering down at the ex-globin.

Only to watch it get back up.

The goo stood up, morphed back into a monster-shape, and sprinted right at them once more.

"AH CRIPE!" Demo shot at it again; the thing flopping back down and then rematerialising like it didn't even give a damn. "STAY DEAD STAY DEAD STAY DEAAAAD!" In a frenzy the pair of defence classes attacked the monster until eventually it completely ceased to exist, gone without a trace besides the trauma of the mercs.

And that was just one of them. Where were the others anyway?

At that moment Heavy made his grand appearance, unable to stop his frantic sprint as his short wee legs blurred cartoon-style. Isaac sat on his head, maybe with the original intent of steering but now just enjoying the ride. Behind them came a trio of ticked-off globins, easily encouragement enough for the team to turn north, glower at the closed door blocking their way out, and charge right at it.

_BAM!_ And that's how you break a Goddamn door down, baby! Somehow they knew the globins couldn't/wouldn't follow them and walked in calmly, as though nothing at all had happened back there. It had though. It most certainly had.

"This is not so bad," Heavy mused, gleefully glancing around the room, completely devoid of visible monsters. "Is almost good. Would be better with sandvich."

An act of caution, the REDs stalked carefully toward the centre of the space, weapons raised. Ha, absol-freakin'-utely nothing to be-

"What is that?" Heavy asked flatly, mindful of a skull-shaped thing rising like a watchtower from the ground. Promptly the monster shot at them, the attack widespread enough the mercs and Isaac had to circle around to evade it. "Was wrong. Do not want to know."

The host, a sentient tower of fleshy stuff topped with a skull, retreated into the floor, protecting itself from retaliation.

"Ohhh, he's _crafty_," Demo muttered in his stealthy voice, briefly resembling a shepherd as he hurriedly rounded up the party for an impromptu huddle. "I say we lure it oot… with poetry."

Engy blinked. "… Or," he interjected, extending the single syllable for emphasis, "Can we use this thing, little buddy?" He presented Technology 2 to Isaac, the kid taking the thing and putting it on the Texan's head, covering his right eye like a fancy-ass monocle. With, like, wires and machine parts.

Pointedly Isaac pointed out a couple of locations, somehow mentally projecting his fabulous plan to the clueless mercs. The Demoman and Heavy (with his newfound, wildly unpredictable running ability) sprinted past the host as near as they dared, provoking it into standing tall again. Waiting safely out of its shot range on the other side of the room, Engy definitively obliterated the monster with a high-powered laser.

"… Heck yeah."

"WOOO!" chorused Heavy and Demo, rejoining them, the three REDs exchanging a multitude of highfives for a stupidly long period of time. By the last few seconds they were basically slapping each other in the face.

Eventually – several tiny sighs of impatience on Isaac's end later – they regained the presence of mind to move on and headed east, through yet another door. Huh, fancy them having a library down here… Curious, the progression tiptoed through the room, gazes flickering over the towers of bookshelves lining the walls. They moved carefully through the otherwise empty space, when Demo stubbed his toe on something.

"Hm?" He bent down to retrieve a rouge book with an unhappy-looking face on the cover from the floor. "Reckon this is somehow plot important," he deliberated, taking it along as he and others leave the room through its only door; the one they entered.

They took the north door when leaving the host room for the second time, stepping into another that, boringly, looked just like all the others. There were however a couple of new enemies to meet - totally gross ones! All the better, ah ha…

In a strange sort of way, the hives (the gross things) slightly resembled the Duke of Flies. Though in appearance they were much closer to mulligoons, they also wondered around quite aimlessly, occasionally producing a fly which really isn't something to thought about for any length of time. Stuff of nightmares right there.

On a whim Demo tried to headbutt one of them and succeeded in hurting himself, which in turn ticked off Heavy and possessed him into punching another one to the same result. Then the pair of them made odd noises with connotations of 'do not want this' when a bunch of flies went for them and they ran off. In a panic Demo somehow 'used' the book he had found and, in a matter of moments, the monsters just keeled over, leaving nothing but a couple more flies.

"… Well what d'ya know." Engy blinked. Isaac cleared out the last little enemies and the party received a key for their troubles, continuing onward through the room and reaching another.

And who'd a thunk it – more flies.

"Anybody else sick of this?" Heavy checked, although he knew the answer, a big old 'yes' judging by the selection of bored-looking guys shooting down the bugs. However things were suddenly shaken up when the party realised what else stood between them and the way out; the delightful cliché of floor-spikes beckoned. Isaac offered a whole bunch of erratic arm gestures to convey 'DO NOT PANIC' which eventually dissolved into undignified flailing, the mercs unsure if they were supposed to join in or not.

Seeing as Engy was the benevolent fixer of practical problems, he was volunteered by the others to go first. The spikes were laid out in square clusters, sporadically spread here and there. Engy adopted an expression of such intense concentration he grew a moustache as he led the progression carefully around the first hazard. The guys dutifully followed as he sidled past the next, and the one after, zigzagging back and forth across the rough floor in a series of average steps and fabulous slides.

Unscathed, miraculously, they reached the door! Only to find it had that gateway-to-Hell thing going on and the mercs stepped backward onto some spikes in shock. Dammit boys.

With a facepalm, Isaac led the way through to;

~THE BOSS ROOM~

Now, while most, if not all, monsters are created/born/appear magically to be scary, some can prove to be oddly cute. Like, to see the cute part might require squinting and standing real far away (and, preferably, they wouldn't be out to kill the observer) but it was there.

So, uh, Meet the Chub.

Isaac for one hated the boss instantly, with its being ideally a massive charger. It sported a fairly crooked set of flat teeth and wee, coal-like eyes, but otherwise Chub had the general appearance of a very big maggot. Blankly the progression gawked up at the pale, sickly grey monster as it moseyed to and fro.

"Sniper ain't with us, but I think w'got some jarate over here," Demo mentioned, in case the others needed to know that. Isaac debated whether to tell them Sniper _was_ here and said something similar, however he was a little distracted when Chub suddenly made a move.

"Whew, this ain't so good," Engy pointed out, watching the boss barge toward them in the manner of a freight train, assuming the train had open jaws lined with many teeth that is. "Reckon we'd, uh, better RUN AWAY!"

The four of them all but threw themselves to the sides, sprawling face first on the ground. Chub barrelled harmlessly past them, stopping short in front of the far wall and looking thoughtful. Then it spawned a charger.

"Eugh," Heavy muttered, making the mistake of wondering how that happened. He took _charge_ (AH HA HA) of the situation and shot the crap out of the smaller enemy, encouraging the others to focus fire on the big one. "YOU HAD BETTER RUN, MAGGOT!"

Yeah it ran right at them.

A collective scream and second frantic dodge later, the team glared at the passing Chub for hindering them so. It would be about then that Engy remembered Technology 2. Promptly the red laser seared the multiple segments of Chub, making the boss let out an unearthly bellow and career toward them again. This time they had the presence of mind to keep shooting as they sidestepped, Chub huffily sending more chargers after them in retaliation.

Taking care of those things as part of his revenge, Isaac turned to see Technology 2 ripping away the last of Chub's health and finishing off the monster. Huh, that Engineer was a credit to the team.

"Victory!" they all highfived once more for good measure then rushed around like kiddies on Smissmas for their post-battle loot. The team insisted that Isaac take the lunch (boosting his health yet higher) and they shared out some medipack equivalents – little heart containers.

With nowhere left to go but down, the guys abandoned caution and leaped through the trapdoor.

_Stats;_

_Isaac – base, 5 HP_

_Demo – base, Necronomicon, 2 HP_

_Heavy – base, 2 HP_

_Engy – base, Technology 2, 2 ½ HP_

_Team in possession of 0 The Fool_

_Team in possession of one key_

**I like Chub. Cute giant killer maggot thing ^^ Globins, though… **_**They. Don't. Die.**_

**Thanks for the read! :D**


	5. The Catacombs

Chapter Four – The Catacombs

~CATACOMBS (CAVES II)~

Simple mistakes, an example being diving down countless feet into darkness, could prove quite costly, especially when lacking literally any safe means of landing. Well, Isaac was light enough to subtly position himself in preparation to land on Heavy again, but the others.

*Insert loud impact sound and pain noises*

Jumping to the ground from Heavy's head, Isaac surveyed their new scenery, tuning out the elongated 'ahhh' the mercs were making. Ugh, similar appearance to the last place, just with more rocks and cobwebs. He soon found the REDs joining him and thinking the same thing, although they were probably really thinking about hats. They missed their hats terribly.

"So… why are w' down here anyhow?" Demo asked, nonchalantly. "Heck, why are _you _down here, Isaac?"

Now Isaac didn't really fancy discussing it, so he briefly acted out a range of little moments that ultimately made everyone wish he hadn't asked.

The solution was to simply continue on, hoping to eventually break out of this place. In wordless agreement they headed north, moseying past a few stone pillars on the way. Nice to know _something_ was responsible for holding the roof up. Or the floor, depending of course on which level one was positioned. Hm.

They trotted through the nearest door and were greeted instantly by a bunch of those spider/hopper-like trites. The unpleasant monsters pounced toward them with no remorse or offers of tea, causing the hilarious-if-watching-it-from-afar reaction of four slightly-manly guys yelping in fright and aimlessly shooting at them. In a frenzy Demo battered away the nearest one with the book (evidently having forgotten he could use it in a much more effective manner) yelling something philosophical about words wielding immense power and something about scarves.

Heavy punted away the last of the four-legged arachnids (?) and, breathing out, the team moved up. "I hope there are no more spiders," the Russian said wishfully, reckoning there would be several appearing in any given moment. Ah ha, as if fate would be _so cruel_ as to do that after all they'd already been through.

… So there were a couple of big spiders in the next room.

"WHY!?" Engy wailed dramatically, incinerating the nearest monster with Technology 2 to watch it split into two smaller spiders. "Dammit boys, this place messed up science."

Several minutes of Isaac chasing one of the wee spiders in zigzags later, they cleared the room and checked out their options. Two doors available – the one on the right sporting the much more attractive appearance of an item room. Eager to leave the cobweb littered room they hurried inside and found naught but a dull grey bucket, four letters scrawled on the side. Most of the progression didn't particularly want to pick it up when they read the word and saw the contents (lard is kinda gross) so Heavy instantly felt sorry for the thing and insisted on taking it along.

As soon as he grabbed it he received a decent health boost and, much to the relief of the others, a little reduction in his running speed. "Aw."

"A worthy sacrifice," Demo proclaimed, staring intensely at nothing for emphasis. "ONWARD!" He tripped over the flat floor quite spectacularly, performing a triple front flip and landing before anyone even noticed. Instead the blissfully ignorant party turned back the way they came and continued in that direction for a new room.

The sole reason they opened it, using their only key, was that they hadn't realised it was shop door until it was too late. The moneyless party nevertheless decided to go in, have a browse, a typical 'What could the harm in that be?' attitude fuelling their stride.

Incidentally, there was bountiful harm to be found.

"This doesn't look like shop," Heavy observed, seeing as the space was overall bare besides the big old monster in the centre. Isaac pouted unhappily – this looked like another of the sins. Darn things.

Greed, naturally, _would_ be one to use a shop as a guise. However if he was going for money here he'd be pretty disappointed. The mercs perhaps were in the process of telling the sin this when it fired at them; triple shot for the best efficiency of killing-ness.

"QUICK, SLIDE TO THE LEFT!" Engy cried, the party smoothly dodging sideways in perfect sync, "SLIDE TO THE RIGHT!" With the grace of a line of coordinated dancing, uh, dancers, the team evaded once again. "SHOOT IT NOW AW YEAH!"

With a little less suave the four of them opened fire on the mini boss, forming a messy rain of bullets, tears and laser beams. Which may not be a list that comes about every day. Either way Greed spawned a couple of hoppers at one point, the headless monsters zooming inconveniently across the room and basically getting in the way. Damn were they annoying…

HEAVY used Rage!

"RUN COWARDS!" He quite moodily chased the things down despite his lowered speed and pummelled the heck outta them. "And YOU," the Russian pointed directly at Greed, the monster's grey form pivoting to glower at him. "You are DEAD." And then came the thing no one lived to describe. Heavy's taunt kill.

One 'Pow, haha' and violent destruction of the mini boss later, the team were pretty much showered in coins, providing them with a fair amount of cash for later on – splendid! When they regrouped in the centre of the room Demo pointed out that they'd have to walk back _all _the way they came, which wasn't so great. Fortunately Isaac remembered 0 The Fool and held it up for the REDs to see. All he got in return of course were clueless faces. Sighing, the youth lofted the tattered tarot card and its effects took hold.

~BACK IN THE START ROOM~

"Funny, that didn't _look _like a teleporter," Demo commented when they arrived, and this time Heavy took the responsibility of facepalming. The liberty, really. "Well let's go!" the oblivious Scotsman beamed, leading the team southward, into the unknown depths of the place that wasn't yet The Depths.

That joke should make sense later.

In the new room Isaac let out a little 'ew' noise upon seeing the new monsters. Those things were less than beautiful; a tad taller than Isaac and stone grey in colour, the back of their skulls for some reason absent, exposing some pink squishy stuff that probably shouldn't ever be exposed. The knights marched back and forth regardless, not so much as straying from their paths until they caught sight of the mercs.

"Oh, this is bad," Heavy mumbled as the enemies careered toward them. Naturally the party chose that moment to start shooting, Engy forgetting to use Technology 2 in favour of rapidly emptying several shots into the nearest knight. They only realised at the last moment, when they were forced to cartwheel/accidently-side-flip to either side, that not a single one of the bullets had done a smidge of damage.

Sometimes friends and foes alike have a single, glaring weakness. Occasionally it's well hidden, else it's blindingly obvious. Such as a missing portion of the skull, exposing pink squishy stuff. Just an example in no way related to current events. Simply mentioning it for no specified reason. Glaring weakness. AHEM.

"OH!" Engy exclaimed at last, "Back 'a the head. Got it."

Isaac shared in this light bulb moment and sneaky-sneaked his way around side the knights, which had continued in their reckless charge until they hit the wall. Time to deal with some of the most frustrating monsters in the game, after that freakin' evil heart-and-mask boss-thing. Hate that guy.

Isaac couldn't pull off a shot before the knight ran at him like a Creeper, minus the hissing. The kid circled around to take another shot, but the silly thing constantly changed direction, until after a while the four monsters and four guys appeared to be locked in some kind of unorganised waltz. Noticing this, the mercs led the dance and Heavy provided a vocalised version of some sort of slow song, the REDs daintily gliding across the room, much to the blatant confusion of poor Isaac.

He paused to watch, alongside an equally puzzled knight, as the men shifted partners and abruptly shot the crap out of the distracted monsters, bowing politely afterward. At that point Engy remembered the piercing effect of Technology 2 and took out the last one, the others glaring in a 'you could have done that earlier' type manner. The Texan shrugged,

"What? Got a dance, got some explosives-" he pointed out the cartoony bombs in the centre of the room – "All-in-all a success, Ah reckon."

There was no arguing with that logic, so the team yielded and moved on. They flourished like lovely red flowers in delightful warm weather on their merry way to see beautiful damn sunshine as they passed through the next doorway. Yeah. And what greeted their happy gazes and radiance of positive energy, in this time of joy and tranquillity…

Couple a' fat ass flies.

"I feel we were misled there," Demo mused aloud. The red boom flies buzzed about the room, large eyes dominating their tubby red bodies as they literally bounced against the walls. This had to be a trap of some description.

"I will go see," Heavy offered, approaching the nearest monster cautiously. It suddenly bounced toward him and in a frenzy he made an odd 'OHHHH' noise, shooting at it repeatedly. On the depletion of its 'living' status the enemy promptly exploded into a fair number of projectiles, making a further dent in the Heavy's boosted health. "IS TRAP! IS DEFINITELY TRAP!"

As he dived back to his teammates they ducked behind the biggest rock they could find, the relative safety of being in cover quite a nice security blankie for the battle-hardened party. In undisguised, probably unnecessary horror they stared around the edge of the boulder, faces contorted into quite disturbingly unhappy expressions. The single, unmindful fly haplessly rebounded from wall-to-wall, not even giving a damn about their presence.

_And yet it was surely plotting._

"Okay, suggestion," Engy gathered everyone's attention, "We jump outta cover, and scare it bad enough it flies away with its tail between its… wings? It prob'ly _has_ a tail, y'know…"

Noting the slight digression, the party needed to hurry up and make their move. Counting up (one, two, skip a few) to the moment, they flung themselves haphazardly into the open with an array of battle cries.

The fly idly cruised past them.

"Sonuva – let's just shoot 'im." The Demoman laid down the simplest solution and fired, six bullets embedding themselves into the bug before it did the exploding thing. The mercs shoved Isaac behind themselves again to keep him out of the firing line, the youth re-establishing to himself why he liked these guys so much.

With that totally terrible threat finally gone, the party was clear to move up. Or down, technically. South. The surprising and quite pleasant thing they found was an entire lack of enemies in the new room. The sparse space contained only a small log fire, tiny tendrils of orange flame stretching with all their teeny might toward the ceiling. Huh, getting through here would be a cinch.

"MEDIC!" Heavy yelled abruptly, having strayed too close and caught fire despite the tens of feet spanning between the flame and the far walls. "FIRE! HELP!"

"For the love of – Heavy quit it," Demo helpfully went over there to assist, only to catch alight himself. Engy was reduced to sighing, knowing it couldn't possibly be this complicated to make it through such a simple place. In agreement, Isaac picked out the next route and waited beside it for the morons to finish running into walls.

Finally they made it through, Demo and Heavy looking a little singed, and came across a fairly more awful place to be.

Some sort of educational field guide might have informed the team that gurgles were unpleasant, swampy-green monsters with a tendency to wander after the unsuspecting and fire weird globs of gas while they were at it. They didn't possess such a guide – but soon they received a bit of first-hand knowledge.

"MOTHER OF ALL THINGS CUTE AND FLUFFY!" Engy exclaimed in panic, dodging one of the attacks with a desperate leap. Heavy, Demo and Isaac blinked slowly at him in wonderment before realising they were under fire and darting to the side. The gurgles lumbered after them, hunched shoulders strained so far forward it was a marvel they stayed upright. The team fled from the gaping monsters, finding a barrel in the centre of the room and getting pursued around it in circleish ovals.

On the forth lap of said barrel the Demoman noticed a trio of letters printed on the side, and paid attention the next time he passed to read 'TNT'. Aw yes.

"Lads, run that-a-way on my count," he commanded, all authority-like, even though he pointed in a fairly vague direction that nobody even saw. Plus instead of counting he simply hollered, "NOOOOOOW!"

Everyone picked a bearing and dashed along it, blissfully ignorant of Demo's plan. When he jumped he spun around, firing his pistol at the barrel. *Grand explosion in two seconds of pure devastation*

"… Oh!" Heavy cried after a pause, figuring out what had happened. Isaac offered him a little thumbs up to say 'You're doing well, pal' before leading the way out of the room, absently walking past the gibs of the gurgles.

With uplifted spirits about this whole endeavour, the progression made their way into the next area wearing contented expressions. Typically badass, they swaggered on through and abruptly met their next foes. Ooh boy. Something like a hybrid between the floaty-head maws and creepy Greed, a group of dull grey keepers hovered in the middle of the room. Their hollow eyes did the Ominous Glowering Thing.

The team glanced uncomfortably to either side, gauging the reactions of their fellows. An uneasy 'meh' seemed to be the prevailing vibe here. With slow, deliberate movements, Demo took out the library book, waiting for the tiny confirming nods of the others, and used the thing to obliterate the crowd without actually having to personally engage.

Smiles of re-contentedness sliding back into their features, the progression calmly and unblinkingly walked through the next door.

Only after it closed behind them did they realise they had just entered;

~THE BOSS ROOM~

"… Aw, Hell." Engy pouted, working out where they were. In the near distance rose their probably-very-worthy opponent, dishearteningly tall and broad in build. In common trend with the big guys in this place, Peep was less-than-pretty on the scale of boss appearances. Dark pink and disturbingly humanoid, it offered them a gap-toothed smile, four stubby arms waving in the air. Suddenly, very Monstro-ess, the monster sprung straight upward, its massive weight doing nothing to slow it down in midair. This being confirmation enough for the mercs that they _were_ in fact fighting at this point, they set about coming up with a strategy.

Step one was dodge the heck outta the way when Peep landed.

"Hey, hey," Demo called the guys, from his position safely out of range of Peep's spectacular crash of a landing. "W' should _trash talk_ 'im!"

Dear sweet Engy, however, proved not to be very good at trash talk. "Yeah, we're gonna – not kill ya a little bit; we're gonna, uh, kill ya… a lot! Ha! Dummy."

Even Peep looked oddly at him there, taking in the extremely good (but awful) attempt of Engy's 'angry' expression. Promptly the monster fired a ring of projectiles outward from itself, evidently unimpressed by the display of aggression, and the party was forced to scatter to avoid, uh, death or damage. Dodge successful, they wisely retaliated with gunfire.

"IF SASHA WAS HERE YOU WOULD BE DEAD NOW!" Heavy informed Peep, quite loudly and honestly a bit rudely I mean God Heavy clean up your act would ya that was uncalled for.

Actually judging by the way Peep just shot at you again man go ahead and beat 'em up.

The fight become a bit of a vicious cycle, with the mercs and Isaac frantically evading one minute and just as frantically shooting the next. Peep had only two shown abilities as of yet – the jumping and the shooting – both of which proved entirely avoidable, assuming one was careful.

The mercs were not careful.

"Say, what's with this big ol' shadow 'round us now?" Engy asked quizzically, standing with his teammates in the centre of an expanding dark smudge on the floor. Demo glanced here and there, disinterested;

"Dunno."

In the next few seconds the three of them were quite flattened underneath Peep despite Isaac's very helpful warning of Jumping Around and Flailing for Emphasis. The kid made a little 'eep' of discontent at the sight, only to see the resilient REDs clamber right back upright the second Peep moved off.

"Ooh," Heavy muttered, a tad disgruntled after that experience, "That was strange." Then they realised how close they were standing to the boss and took the opportunity to fill it with lead and lasers.

Now, Peep does a little somethin'-somethin' when lowered to two-thirds its health. Frankly it's gross, but the randomiser gave us Peep, so… Let's just say it, uh, detached from itself a, uh, organ of vision, which, um, proceeded to, er, float about the room. Eugh. Look it up.

Anyhow, the badly wounded mercs hadn't much option but to keep a close _eye_ on that, unless they felt like dieing in such an unorthodox manner, so that probably hindered their battle progress. And still, despite his much higher health, Isaac found himself under constant protection from the mercs; being defence classes kinda added the trait to their job descriptions.

There wasn't, however, much to be done upon the usage of Peep's third ability. A substance named creep, basically a poisonous liquid, had the blatant disregard for others' feelings to go ahead and exist. Apparently, Peep had the power to utilise the stuff. None too good, that, 'least not for us.

Well to sum up that's how Heavy met his demise – running panicked circles in the creep until he merely flopped over. Honestly it was pretty funny to watch, AND okay to laugh at because of respawn. Win-win.

Engy and Demo were fairly busy laughing of course, therefore Isaac had to take over the battle for a minute, albeit with a 'DAMMIT GUYS' expression. Peep was doing the ground-stomping thing, so Isaac casually left one of the cartoony bombs where he was standing and darted off. The mercs' little undignified giggle fit escalated when the boss landed on the explosive and made a somewhat uncomfortable face.

In a matter of three-point-four seconds Demo abruptly got all serious and hysteron proteron-y; "LET US DIE AND CHARGE INTO THE THICK OF THE FIGHT!" Isaac shrugged and gave him the remaining bomb, as though giving it to the currently-insane fellow was the best idea he ever had, and he politely stepped aside to let the Scotsman get on with it.

By the time Demo did his thing, Peep had detached its other organ of sight which pretty much signified it was on its way out. That attack of Demo's though got him awfully close to the boss, leaving him directly in the way of its next shot. We lost a good Scotsman that day. *Very sad and moving banjo solo*

This of course left Engy and Isaac, the former now quite bothered by the loss (however temporary) of his buddies. The lights dimmed yet further as Engy moved into his This is My Last Moment Stare Into Nothingness;

"Isaac. TELL TEDDY ROOSEBELT AH LOVE HIM!"

Lacking the ability to match a life form to the name, Isaac felt inclined to tell Engy he couldn't realistically pass on the message. The Texan though breezed past him and charged at Peep, pistol and Technology 2 firing like aaaaall Hell. While the barrage succeeded in draining the last of Peep's health, it also allowed the creep to whittle down the last of the Engineer's hit points.

So with the mercs gone and the boss in an unfortunate number of pieces, Isaac was alone again. Frankly, that seemed a bit of a bummer. Well hopefully The Morons would still be working for the next floor, leaving nothing left to do but grab dinner (HP up!) and leap down the new trapdoor.

* * *

_Stats;_

_Isaac – base, 6 HP_

_Demo – base, Necronomicon, 0 HP (Dead)_

_Heavy – speed down, Bucket of Lard, 0 HP (Dead)_

_Engy – base, Technology 2, 0 HP (Dead)_

_Team wallet – 5 coins_

**Argh. Peep. Peep gross. No like Peep.**

**Reading. Thank you for. Byeee**


	6. The Depths

**My sincerest apologies for the delay, my dear readers; exams are just awful things for stalling the writing process**

**However…**

**It's offense class tiiiiime! :D**

* * *

Chapter Five – The Depths

~THE DEPTHS~

He'd done it again, folks. Dived into murky water, or in this case a dark trapdoor leading to who-knows-what.

I do. I know what. I'm the author.

Nevertheless, Isaac was once again fortunate to land on someone who was (inadvertently) nice enough to break his fall. This time, though, it wasn't someone with the bulk and ample squishiness of our resident Heavy Weapons Guy.

"Oh jeez, that's a rib fracture…"

Isaac glanced down briefly, then out of general politeness clambered off of the Scout. Yay – new batch of morons! The kid waited for Soldier, Pyro and Scout to come to their senses (to the highest extent they could manage) and prepared for some lame but almost conceivable excuse of how one of them could possibly know his name. Soldier abruptly sat bolt upright and pointed directly at him;

"You." Here it comes. "… What's your name?" Oh. Isaac introduced himself, wondering how the helmeted fellow could even see. Assuming he could. Soldier paused for a moment as though mentally assessing the name, then simply shrugged and hopped to his feet to give the place a look-see. He would use his extensive knowledge of the American language to describe this place in a single, perfect word… Grey.

There was a fabulous abundance of grey! Grey stone floor, grey stone _walls_, of all things! SO MUCH GODDAMN GREY!

… That's literally all the description you're getting of the Depths. It's just grey, dude. (Unless, naturally, it's seen in Pyrovision.)

"How'd we get here?" Scout asked in manner that suggested he didn't _really _care – he was just obligated to find out. Isaac offered them a vague, definitely-not-his-fault explanation and then, trying not to stare at the Pyro giddily dashing about to explore the bland room, went for a hat-trick in using the 'point at the door' strategy.

The three mercs all but charged at the door, practically attacking each other on the way with their childish need to get there first. Sounds like a success.

Just before they headed through they found their complimentary weapons: pistols all round and Soldier still had his shovel. Isaac caught up to them just as Pyro started fawning over the tiny gun and Soldier complained how he probably couldn't rocket jump with this thing. 'Probably'. How loose is his grasp on reality? Next he'll be thinking there are, like, wizards that can make people do the dance from Thriller, or a freakin' Horseless Headless Horsemann or… Oh.

The party entered the next room and were instantly confronted with an old classic – attack flies. For some reason the REDs turned to Isaac for official instructions on what to do here, so the kid made a general 'have at it' motion and opened fire. Being back to killing things provided a nice sense of familiarity, in an odd sort of way, so that halted any potential-though-unlikely bouts of homesickness. Basesickness. Homebasesickness, caused by missing the Homebase sale.

Anyway despite their remarkable Annoyingness Factor the buzzing flies were soon dealt with in a few shots each, leaving the room in silence for a few moments before Soldier cried a victorious 'Yay!' and highfived himself. This proved a slight issue because he had forgotten he was holding both a gun and a shovel and those were two things that probably shouldn't have been smashed together.

Moving swiftly on, they headed north and jump-kicked into the next room, figuring they were on board with this whole fighting-monsters-in-a-random-cave thing. With a child. Fortunately though they had the presence of mind to stop when they encountered these, uh, wiggly creatures.

"Heh heh, look at them squirm," Soldier sounded amused, while Scout just let out a less-impressed 'ew'. Isaac chose to stand back and see what the monsters were gonna do (as it was probably not nice) but Pyro made its Cute Thing Ahead noise and flounced after the nearest one. The wiggly lil' guy moseyed back and forth, not causing any trouble in the neighbourhood, until it caught sight of the happy pyromaniac.

Abruptly Pyro turned a one-eighty and started running with its IN DISTRESS! noise as the mutated levitating leech with an alarming number of pointed teeth sped after it.

"Woah, jeez, didn't see that comin'," Scout informed the others, pausing to make a 'like whaaaat' expression before opening fire on the closest leech. "Um, how come you're all runnin' as fast as me?"

From where it was frantically pouncing sideways to avoid one of the hungry-looking monsters, Pyro yelled something about either different game mechanics or the best brands of tea in the world. I'm going with the latter.

The offense classes and Isaac formed the spectacular system of standing still and shooting, to running away like sissies, to standing in a new spot and doing the same again. Failsafe! Plans _have_ always been their strongpoint. Remember when they had a lamp for a lawyer and attacked a bear with someone else's femur?

Regardless, they soon took care of the sudden leech infestation and decided to go through the big golden shiny door opposed to the dull brown one, as per Pyro's instructions. Once they found out there was a free item inside, Scout called dibs and there wasn't anything the other armed guys could do about it. Well that's how Scout got a new belt.

It was an awfully long belt ('This thing is like a _mile_, you guys!') so he had to wrap it around his waist an inordinate amount of times and tuck in the end, muttering 'Better safe than sorry' a lot. Eventually they passed through the leech room again to go somewhere new and exciting! And fast-pace because speed-up-belt fun.

Now. The things in this next room sported the absolute perfect name for a true and dedicated fan of TF2. Pooters. Isn't that just marvellous. If only Heavy were here. Poot.

"Well," Soldier laid down the official verdict. "They aren't especially good-looking." And he was quite right. Like an unhealthy majority of the creatures down here, they resembled flies, clear wings beating jerkily to keep them aloft. They had unusually-shaped peachy-brown-coloured bodies, like somebody had mixed a lot of colours of paint and thrown it across the wall, figuring the splatter made a vague fly figure. In actuality the mercs hadn't really the time to observe much of this, as evidently pooters had the ability to shoot at them.

~PYROVISION~

Oh, golly! A game of dodge ball with these nice butterflies! Pyro squealed in excitement and clutched its mini rainblower in preparation for playing. This was gonna be fun! Pyro flounced sideways to evade the first shot, laughing along with its teammates and happily retaliating!

~REALITY (OR THIS DISTORTED VERSION OF IT)~

Pyro brutally shot the nearest pooter right in the face, and the poor bug was reduced to nothing but gory-things. The others heard the merc's giddy laughter and sidled to the left for a bit of elbow room and/or the distant possibility of relative safety from its wrath.

By the way, remember that. Wrath. Okay? Sneaky foreshadow, he he.

Anyway the pooters' aim was nothing too spectacular and honestly they didn't even seem to fully realise what was going on, so the lot of them were soon dealt with. Not to mention the loot they acquired from the little fight was none other than a key – prefect seeing as there was a locked door at the back of the room. This got Scout a tad excited.

"OH! OH! I WANNA DO IT! GIMME THE KEY I WANNA DO IT. SOLDIER. SOLDIER! DON'T YOU FREAKIN' DARE!" Scout bolted after the suddenly very determined Soldier, both dead-set on getting to unlock the door with the kickass silver key. "ISAAC! TELL SOLDIER TO QUIT IT!"

Isaac let out the sigh of an impatient parent and marched after them, dragging the distracted Pyro along with him. Scout had caught up to Soldier and the pair of them flung uncoordinated punches at each other to try and claim the title of Key… User? Key - key door-opening… guy. Key Door-Opening Guy. Isaac simply plucked the key from them on the way past, and oblivious the REDs continued slapping mostly at the air but occasionally scoring a hit. Half the time on themselves.

They abruptly halted upon the distinct _click_ of the unlocking door, and adopted looks akin to betrayal as Isaac and Pyro sauntered through into darkness. Pouting severely, the offense classes shoved past each other and charged after them.

Pyro had picked up on the shopping music straight away, and whipped a shopping basket out of nowhere. It paced between the only two items in the place and hummed along, wondering if they actually needed money seeing as the shop was technically unmanned.

… Huh. Why _do _you need money?

Isaac chose not to ponder exactly where the team wallet was being kept and somehow took out the coins they'd gotten from the Greed fight. Five wasn't an awful lot, seeing as that nifty-lookin' ladder there was evidently worth fifteen.

"Hurry up and pick something," Soldier grumbled, "This music is too… _catchy_." It was already starting. The involuntary dancing. Soon, it would be too late. Argh.

Obliging, Isaac picked up the item they could afford – one of those helpful blue soul hearts which I now realise is the equivalent of overheal – and their money vanished. A heartbeat later Soldier dragged the lot of them out of the shop and violently slammed the door on the music. That had been close. He'd nearly been trapped forever by the catchiness.

Subconsciously moonwalking, Soldier led the party through the next door, encountering an odd little thing named a vis in the room. Four of them, actually, all peculiar wee monsters consisting of a stomach and a pair of lil' feet.

"This place just gets better and better," Scout said, sounding awfully insincere about the matter. "See, lookit, now they're shootin' at us. And now I'm thinkin'; let's get outta the way. OH CRAP LET'S GET OUTTA THE WAY!"

Evidently the vis could fire a giant red beam of death from their stomach-things. Who knew. The mercs and Isaac dodged to the side, only to get in line-of-sight with another vis and have it shoot at them too. Frankly this rendered the space quite uninhabitable, so the team had little interest in staying. Surviving, on the other hat, was something they were _very _interested in.

"UNLEASH HELL!" Soldier suggested loudly, which proved to be quite a good idea. Gold star for you, Solly. "HURRY, MEN! GET OUT THE BATTLE TIC TACS!"

Scout blinked. "Ya don't mean 'tactics'?"

"No," Soldier replied casually, taking some mints out his pocket.

Then they got their act together and shot the ever-loving crap out of the vis, which were having the worst time trying to line up a shot anyway. Really it was the nice thing to do. The shooting. Hm. The party made their merry way out of that room and passed through one containing a bunch of independent, sentient brains wandering around. Certainly odd, but stranger things had happened.

Like fighting a personified sin, for example.

Wrath seemed to be a cranky fellow, and he had a fondness of chucking explosives everywhere. Pyro stood in front of one for a while, wondering why the airblast wasn't working, and was promptly launched into the far wall with an alarmingly loud fluffy-impact-noise. The battle probably wouldn't have taken so long if it weren't for the layout of the room, which led to Scooby Doo-like dashes back and forth between a load of rocks littered across the floor.

The rocks were grey, by the way. Like everything. Even Wrath was dressed in grey.

Isaac for one retained his fed-up attitude toward these particular mini bosses. There had to be a sure, quick-fire way of ending the fight in a highly dignified, thought-out manner worthy of being recorded in the history books. Ooh! Got it.

In the aforementioned dignified manner he turned around and violently punted Wrath's last thrown explosive into the monster's own face. Pyro backflipped around the room in some kind of goal celebration, crashed into both Scout and Soldier, and the three of them smashed through the next door, leaving Isaac to grab their post-battle loot (a tarot card) and hurry after them.

"Heh heh, they don't have heads," Scout observed the next group of monsters with a very mature chuckle. Know what's awesome? People who actually chuckle in real life. Makes my day, really does. As much as noting the laughing habits of the best video game characters in the universe is great.

ANYWAY. No, these monsters didn't have heads. In fact they were more or less just hoppers, complete with considerably unnecessary bit of pre-battle blood spatter. Delightful, and puzzling. The lot of them went ahead and got the party started by springing about the room like drunken gazelles playing The Floor is Lava. The mercs and Isaac on the other hand debated whether joining them in this would be fun and/or remotely beneficial, before realising they'd be better off simply attacking.

"Remember when all we killed was the BLU team?" Soldier sighed wistfully, "Feels like it was yesterday." It was, in fact, yesterday. "And we killed other stuff I guess. Ah, Halloween." With Soldier suddenly stuck in a bubble of nostalgia and robot-related thoughts the only thing that could revive him was a decent kick to the head. Fortunately, these particular monsters were good at providing just those.

Somehow said kick turned on the weird and wonderful mechanics of Garry's Mod and Soldier quite spectacularly soared through the air, limbs altogether wildly out of proportion, and his involuntary flailing took out literally all the monsters. Scout and Pyro had built up an immunity to the shock this sort of event would usually induce in people, and Isaac had had to learn pretty quickly, so the team carried on like nothing had happened. They soon reached the next door.

The door, which likely had the intention of scaring folks away (or at the very least serving to unnerve them) only encouraged the REDs of the party to charge in all the more enthusiastically due to its haunted house-like wonderment. Freakin' man children. Isaac followed after them with the beginnings of a 'Boss Ahead: Caution' sort of warning, but the lot of them had already vanished into the gloom.

~BOSS ROOM~

The team rushed into the room with an air of great overconfidence and a hint of 'ooh, dark in here' vibes, as per usual. 'Usual' as in when they were, y'know, in dark places. Ramble is a funny and relevant word.

"WAIT A MINUTE." Soldier abruptly stopped dead, critically scanning the perimeter from behind a helmet he couldn't even see through. That really is a problem we ought to get that fixed. "This is clearly the perfect place... for an _ambush_!" He glared at the mercs on either side of him like they might prove to be the culprits of such a cowardly form of attack.

Pyro took only a moment's thought about that to get all flustered and panic while shooting at the roof, dislodging a sizeable chunk of the ceiling. Isaac dodged the untimely friendly fire and was in the process of pointing out the whole boss room concept when he was again interrupted. By the boss, in fact, which is a tad unfortunate if given a little consideration.

Loki - and not the one from Marvel, okay? - could only be described as a small, red, devil-looking thing on a severe Bonk rush. We're talking that time in _Dare Games_ when Scout broke the universe level rush. However, he quite lacked the general scariness of an average dungeon boss.

"... Huh, that's it?" Scout sounded slightly bewildered, as though cheated out of a good fight. "Yeah, _real_ scary. What can it even - JESUS CHRIST IT'S EVIL KILL IT GUYS KILL IT!"

Evidently Loki, for all its tiny size and wee high-pitched noises, could shoot at them _and_ do so very swiftly. The mercs fluked out in the sense they dodged the shots just by standing where they were, and they also had a nice view of poor Isaac hitting the back wall and the 'overheal' soul heart shattering within seconds.

Pyro mumbled something like 'Aw, _Hell_ no' with all the attitude in its system whipped up its pistol in slow motion, gladly firing at Loki in retaliation.

Loki was only mad because they had strayed into its newly refurbished boss chamber. It even had a spiky tile zooming around the place.

Whatever, a mad Loki was a fast Loki, and because it's such a rare boss I don't really remember how to defeat it. Fought it, like, once. Either way after Soldier had to fire a warning shot at Scout for dashing around yelling 'GOTTA GO FAST' the boss continued to claim more of Isaac's HP, to the extent the team decided they needed an Escape Plan. Not the pickaxe, nice as that would be, just the plan.

Hm. Not a pickaxe… _BUT MAYBE A SHOVEL!? _*courtroom drama sound*

Soldier yelled incoherently and stabbed his shovel into the floor, fully prepared to hack their way to freedom, when a trapdoor simply came into existence the moment the blade touched down. Scout held the official verdict.

"Lame."

The trio of offense classes summoned Isaac (in the process of frantically dodging another blast of shots) to the trapdoor, through which the four of them fell into the depths… II.

_Stats;_

_Isaac – base, 4 HP_

_Scout – speed up, the Belt 3 HP_

_Soldier – base, We Need To Go Deeper!, 3 HP_

_Pyro – base, 2 HP_

_Team in possession of XXI The World_

* * *

**THE BEST REFERENCE I'VE EVER MADE EVER IS IN THIS CHAPTER :D Tell you what, if anyone gets it before I post the next chapter then I'll give the first person to do so a TBoI emoticon over Steam :p It's creepy. Fair warning.**


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